


conflagration

by MusicWritesMyLife



Series: i want you here, now, all night [1]
Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-23 16:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13193826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicWritesMyLife/pseuds/MusicWritesMyLife
Summary: "Is this what it’s like? When people love each other?"He thinks of his parents, the way his father used to smile at his mother over the newspaper, the way they held hands on the way to church, the way, after his father’s death, he used to find his mother asleep in her armchair, as if the thought of going up to an empty bed was too much.Yes, he wants to say."I don't know," he says quietly, and it’s the truth, in a way.(or:Wonder Womanas told by Steve.)





	conflagration

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be published right after the movie came out, but then it - and my life - snowballed way out of my control. 
> 
> Apologies for the title, but I couldn't help myself. It, and the excerpts, are from Beau Taplin, who's poetry is tragically beautiful and perfect for these two.

_I want to fall asleep with you_

_and I could care less_

_whether it is in_

_l_ _ayers upon layers_

_of clothing_

_or only our skin—_

_all I really want is to wake up_

_not knowing_

_where I end and you begin._

 

 

-Beau Taplin, “A Goodnight”

_._

_._

_._

 

Steve Trevor made his peace with death a long time ago. He kissed his mother goodbye and got on a ship for England with no intention of making it home alive. In a war that’s killed millions, he’s accepted that he’ll be another one; another body buried in a nameless field, trying desperately to win a war many would argue he had no business fighting in in the first place.

 

Still, he never thought it would be like this. Not so _soon_ , not when he has such an important message to deliver.

 

It’s ironic, he thinks to himself as he struggles to free his safety belt, that after having survived four years of horrors he should die _now_ , when the fate of the war is literally in his hands.

 

(Well, technically, in his coat pocket, but still.)

 

He always thought he’d die making a difference, that, even if he was never heralded as a hero, he would know he’d tried to make the world a better place. It seems like cheating to die now, in the middle of the most important mission of his career.

 

He swears he can see something—an outline, a figure, silhouetted against the sun like a mirage—standing on the ruins of his stolen plane, but then the water pulls him under and he doesn’t see anything at all.

 

* * *

 

His first thought when he opens his eyes and sees her face is that this is heaven. Then he realises he’s still in his wet uniform and his lungs are on fire and the sun blinding his eyes is the same one he watched fade under the waves moments before.

 

So the figure wasn’t a mirage after all.

 

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he finds himself wondering if maybe this is heaven after all. It stands to reason, from the little he knows about death, that he _might_ arrive in heaven wearing the clothes that he died in.

 

He must be dead. An angel this beautiful can’t be real.

 

“Wow,” he croaks, squinting against the bright sun to try and better make out the planes of her face. Not his smoothest line, but somehow, using a slick come on seems offensive. Angels deserve better.

 

She frowns, an adorable crinkling of her brow that he instinctively wants to smooth over with his thumb. He can still feel her fingertips on his jaw; their imprint seems burnt into his skin. “You are a man?”

 

It’s a question, not a statement, and that throws him for a minute. “Yeah— I mean, do I not look like one?”

 

His rescuer tilts her head to the side, frown deepening, and there are a million questions on the tip of his tongue ( _how do you not know about men?_ ), but then there’s a sound like fabric tearing and the groaning of steel and those are _German ships._ They’ve found him.

 

“What are those?” his rescuer asks, and Steve stomach sinks.

 

They’re the bad guys, he says, but what he really means is they’re _war_ and _unspeakable horrors_ and _death_ , and he’s brought them here. This place looks like peace, like paradise, and he’s brought war to their doorstep.

 

This is the life of a spy, a colleague told him once. Keep everyone at arm’s length, because all you bring with you is death.

 

* * *

 

Of all the jailers Steve has had (and it’s a larger number than he’d care to admit), the Amazons are by-far the most considerate.

 

There’s no bag over his head when they march him off the beach, not even any handcuffs—though he thinks that has more to do with the fact that they all know he’s no match for them, even if they weren’t armed to the teeth. Their efficiency on the beach—and his own inadequacy—made that very clear.

 

They blame him for Antiope’s death. He can’t really argue with any of that; after all, if he’d never crash-landed on their island, she’d be alive.

 

(If he’d never crash-landed on their island, he’d be dead.)

 

He expects an interrogation. Even if he’d never been captured before, he’d know; the first thing they’re taught in intelligence is how to resist interrogation, because that’s the only thing that happens to spies who are captured. So when they lead him into a small, dark room, one that looks a little bit like a cave, he braces himself for the questions, the torture, that will inevitably follow.

 

Hippolyta fixes him with another ferocious glare, and Steve takes a deep breath, steeling himself for blows and answers he can’t give. He closes his eyes and sends a quiet prayer to a God he’s long forgotten about that his mother and sisters will be looked after. None of this is their fault.

 

Hippolyta’s voice echoes though the cave like the sweep of an executioner’s blade. “Send for the guard when he is healed.”

 

Wait.

 

_What?_

 

Steve opens his eyes in time to see the other women begin to file out of the room. This must be some kind of hospital, he realises. Whatever interrogation they have planned is obviously postponed until he’s been looked at.

 

Well, it sure as hell isn’t the way things like this are usually done.

 

Not that he’s complaining. His head is pounding, he can feel blood seeping down his arm, and there’s a fire in his ribs that he knows all too well from too many downed airplanes. Still—

 

“I’m not—” he interjects because as much as he would love to prolong the inevitable torture, he has a mission to accomplish. Every second he wastes here brings them another step closer to annihilation, so he’d really just like to get this over with so that they can either kill him or let him go. (He’s still half-convinced they’re just going to kill him for what happened on the beach, but the fact that his rescuer has been hovering over his shoulder the whole time like a guardian angel makes him think that maybe there’s some hope for his sorry ass after all.) “Look, I appreciate all this, I really do, but I’m fine.”

 

His rescuer— _Diana,_ her name is Diana, like the Roman goddess of wisdom and war and he can't think of a more fitting name, really—places a gentle hand on his knee. He can feel her palm print like a brand through his trousers. “You are injured,” she says. Her voice is so kind, so soft, like a balm on Steve’s world-weary soul, that it takes all the strength he has left not to lean into her.

 

(If this is love, then he is falling so, _so_ , hard.)

 

“Who _is_ she?” he whispers as she disappears around the corner, flanked by her mother’s guards. He remembers the way she charged into battle even when he told her to stay down, the way she wielded and sword and a bow as if it were nothing. He’s convinced that there isn’t a single woman in the world who could even come _close_ to holding a candle to her.

 

“The princess of Themyscira,” the healer says, amused, and Steve nearly jumps right out of his skin because _Jesus_ he didn’t think anyone was listening. “Diana. She is fiery. The young ones always are.”

 

“She saved my life,” Steve says quietly. He fiddles with the strap of his father’s watch and remembers the day his mother sent him off to war, a lifetime ago, it seems. _Keep it safe_ , she said. He knew what she meant: _Be safe. Bring him home to me._

 

He smiled and kissed her cheek and told her he loved her.

 

He didn’t promise to come home. He didn’t think he would make it home.

 

He still doesn’t, but maybe, with Diana’s help, he might stand a chance. The _world_ might stand a chance.

 

All he has to do is find a way to ask.

 

* * *

 

The interrogation isn’t terrible. They wrap him in a lasso that glows and burns when he tries to evade their questions, but they release him fairly quickly after he starts talking about the horrors of war and put him in a glowing pool that does a damn good job of healing his wounds, and, in all honesty, second-degree burns are hardly the worst thing he’s suffered at the hands of an enemy. All things considered, he got off pretty easy.

 

In fact, they’ve all but left him unattended now. There’s a guard posted at the entrance to the cave to prevent him from escaping, but Steve is pretty sure he’d get lost well before he made any decent kind of escape attempt. Besides, he doesn’t gets the impression that the Amazons don’t mean to keep him here forever, so the best thing he can do is plot his course back to London while he waits for them to set him free.

 

In the meantime, though, he’s going to enjoy this bath. Hot water is in short supply in London, and even though he doesn’t understand how this works or why it’s glowing, his father taught him better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

He can take a few minutes to enjoy himself. Surely he’s earned it.

 

He clambers out of the pool after what seems like both too long and not nearly long enough, refreshed enough to start plotting his course home. He’s reaching for his watch when he hears an intake of breath and nearly jumps right out of his skin.

 

“ _Jesus_.”

 

Diana stands in front of him, looking at him with what his mother would call _clinical curiosity_. It isn’t exactly a surprise that she’s come — he saw the look on her face when he spoke of war, and figured it was only a matter of time — but he didn’t expect it to be while he’s, well… _naked_.

 

She stares at him just long enough to make him feel like a zoo exhibit. He should cover himself, but there is no shame in Diana’s eyes, no fear—only curiosity and calculation, like this is information she is filing away for later use. When she asks him if he is an _average representation of his species_ , it is _he_ who blushes like a schoolgirl as he tries to think of a response. _Above average_ , he says, which he likes to think is true, but honestly, what else is he supposed to say?

 

Diana tells him her mother has forbidden her from helping him. He isn’t surprised. He saw the look in Hippolyta’s eyes during the interrogation, the glances she cast upon her daughter when she thought no one was watching. It was the same look in his mother’s eyes when she waved him goodbye from a dock in New York as he set sail for England: the look of someone who has seen war and understands that its horrors are not something to be taken lightly.

 

He tells her it’s all right, and it is — he never expected anything from them, though he hoped for it — but he needs to get back to the front as soon as possible. He doesn’t mean to, but he finds her telling her about his father’s saying and his watch and how he’s in this war now because he tried doing nothing and it didn’t work out so well for him. He doesn’t miss the spark in her eyes when he talks about duty, and, for the first time in a long time, he has hope that maybe this war might turn out all right.

 

He isn’t surprised when Diana reappears later as he’s trying to plot a course off this damn island—a task that’s proving to significantly more difficult than anticipated since his compass _doesn’t work —_ in fact, he’s been expecting her. Yes, he starts something awful, but it’s not every day that an Amazonian warrior woman plants her boot inches from his face with all the flair of a New York show girl and announces that she’ll get him back to London if he’ll take her to the front. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t waiting for her, just that she caught him off guard.

 

He shouldn’t take her. He knows it, just like he knows this war will never have a hope of ending unless he can get Maru’s notebook to British Intelligence. He bites his tongue as Diana embraces her mother on the wharf, hard enough that he tastes blood, because she is leaving behind everything she’s ever known, and for what? All he can offer her is despair and death.

 

The fact is, he needs to get out of here, and he has a hell of a lot better chance with Diana’s help.

 

She’ll never make it to the front, not if he can help it, but it doesn’t hurt to let her think so.

 

* * *

 

“Have you never met a man before?” he asks as they try to get comfortable with one another. He couldn’t refuse her, didn’t want to really, and when she kept insisting it was all too easy to give in, but it isn’t _easy_ ; Steve hasn’t fallen asleep beside a woman in as long as he can remember, not without sleeping with them first, and Diana—well, this is as new to her as it is to him, he thinks. Newer, probably. He’s afraid to move too much, afraid to look at her too much. She’s the sun and he is Icarus, flying far too close. “What about your father?”

 

“I had no father. My mother sculpted me from clay and I was brought to life by Zeus.”

 

“Huh.” This should not come as any surprise, given everything Steve has seen over the past few days. Still, it’s not every day that someone admits to having been brought to life by a _god_. The kind of people Steve’s always thought weren’t _real_. “Well, that’s neat.”

 

He should just leave it at that, really, because his pride and his sanity have taken enough of a beating for today, but he can’t stop himself.

 

“Well,” he hears himself saying, all stilted and awkward because, again, this isn’t the kind of thing you explain every day, “where I come from, we, uh, do things a little differently. Make babies, that is.”

 

She looks at him like he’s crazy because _of course_ she knows about _reproductive biology_ and the _pleasures_ _of the flesh_ and _sweet merciful Lord_ he is so out of his league. She’s read all twelve of Clio’s treatises on _bodily pleasure_ for fuck’s sake, and while that has him half hard already because _God_ the things she must know, he sobers up pretty damn quick when she informs him calmly that men are _unessential for pleasure._

 

She says it like it’s a fact. Like there isn’t a single thing in the world he could offer her that would please her.

 

It’s one hell of a sting—all the more because it’s true.

 

(There are plenty of women he’s met, especially in this war, who get along just fine without a man in their lives; most of them, in fact, get along better. This whole idea of _necessity_ is just another way to bolster the fragile male ego, and Steve gets it, _he does_ , but he’s one of those men, alright, and occasionally, he likes having his ego stroked a little.)

 

* * *

 

Even with the ride they hitch just off the coast of Spain, it takes then nearly a week to reach London. Steve, who is known among the force for his cool head under pressure, spends the whole week constantly checking the charts for short cuts and fidgeting when he (inevitably) finds none. (There are thousands of lives at stake and every minute they spend navigating the Mediterranean is another moment they can't afford to lose, alright, so he's entitled to a little anxiety. The fate of humanity is riding on his success, and he'd like not to be the one responsible for their annihilation.) Diana, on the other hand — whom Steve gets the impression is not a generally calm person about anything that she has a stake in — goes about her tasks serenely. She isn’t concerned about the imminent doom whose portent Steve has been carrying in his pocket this last week — she believes that all she needs to do to end the war is to find and kill Ares.

 

Right.

 

Steve wants to believe her, more than anything, but human life is rarely that simple, and war is the least simple of it all — war is messy and complicated and impossible to solve overnight. It takes negotiations and haggling and false promises from governments who push their own agendas at the expense of their people to end a war, not the death of one man.

 

(There is a part of Steve, small and dark and ugly, that hopes Diana will fail. He isn't proud of it, but the truth is this: even if Ares does exist and Diana can kill him, Steve is terrified that any corruption he may have instilled in the hearts of men has taken root, that maybe killing the god of war is not enough to set them free. Maybe it isn't Ares anymore — maybe humanity is to blame.)

 

Steve, who has been indirectly—if not directly—responsible for destroying the innocence of hundreds of dewy-eyed young men, does not want to see the light of hope fade from Diana's eyes.

 

So, when she lays a gentle hand on his shoulder as he fiddles with lines or encourages him to sleep as he spends yet another night pouring over charts, he gives her a small half-smile and obeys. It doesn't make him feel any better, but he knows, rationally, that his efforts are futile anyway; all he can do is bide his time and pretend that Diana is right about mankind.

 

“It will be all right,” she says softly. She speaks with a calmness he cannot feel, one that belies a wisdom beyond her years, but her eyes are so _naive_. “You’ll see.”

 

They will see, he thinks to himself, either way.

 

(He has a terrible fear it will be Diana who is proven wrong.)

 

“So,” he says on the third day, coiling a bit of rope between his fingers in a sad approximation of one of the many knots he used to know how to tie as a boy, back when he actually sailed, “what's it like growing up on Paradise Island?”

 

It's an inane question and he knows it, but he needs to keep his mind off what they're about to do. Diana might not understand the realities of war — how can she when all she has ever known is peace and prosperity, when she has spent her whole life training for a war most believed would never come? — but Steve does, and yet he is willingly leading her into the thick of it because he needed to get off the island and because she might be useful and because he has a vain, fleeting hope that she will be _right_.

 

Besides, he is genuinely curious.

 

Diana, lounging on the stern (she’s supposed to be manning the rudder but there’s almost no wind and the midday sun has made them both lax), tips her head back and laughs. Steve tries not to stare at the tanned column of her throat. She shed her long cloak the moment the sunlight crept through the clouds, letting it fall into a puddle at her feet, and Steve had to try not to stare then too, to ignore the gleam of polished bronze and tanned skin, the curve of muscles, toned from years of training. She’s let her hair down too; it cascades over her shoulder in long dark waves that catch the sunlight. It’s mesmerising — _she’s_ mesmerising.

 

“It is hardly a paradise,” she says.

 

“I don't know. An island of warrior women and eternal sunshine? Sounds pretty heavenly to me.”

 

He’s trying to be aloof, but it sounds false even to his own ears.

 

“It is not always sunny,” Diana says seriously, like she is divulging a great secret. Steve wonders if she is deliberately ignoring his failed attempt at a joke.

 

Y _ou've never been to war_ , he wants to say. 

 

“It's peaceful,” he says and he hopes she understands what he can’t say: that peace is something he’s never really known, that all his life there has been another war looming on the horizon, that the quiet simplicity of peaceful life is a paradise he's always longed to know.

 

“Soon mankind will be too,” she says reassuringly.

 

She understands. Steve wishes that made him feel better. 

 

* * *

 

It occurs to Steve belatedly, as Diana’s cloak slips from her shoulders in the middle of a London street, baring enough skin to make passers-by stare, that if they’re going to have any hope at pulling off whatever the hell this is, she is going to need clothes.

 

He is _so_ wrong.

 

(He can hear his sisters laughing at him. _Oh Stevie,_ Tilly coos. _You should know better. Covering a woman up doesn’t make her any less than she is._ )

 

His thumb brushes Diana’s cheek as he pushes the glasses onto her nose, a last-ditch attempt to make her look less, well, _other-worldly_. They have little effect; _as if glasses won’t make her look like the most beautiful woman in the world_ , Etta says snidely, and _Lord_ , Steve thinks, this world does not deserve her. She’s too bright, too honest, and their world is too dark.

 

They could use a little bit of her light, he thinks as he watches her pass off her sword and shield to Etta — weapons that she swears will kill Ares and end the war and restore goodness to the hearts of men.

 

He wants to believe her — _God_ , he wants to so badly, but he’s seen too much in this war, in this world, to really believe that Diana’s vision of peace is attainable. They call this the war to end all wars, but it’s just a slogan, empty words to recruit more men to the slaughter. There will be another — many more, probably. Humanity has never been able to coexist peacefully.

 

Case in point: Steve can feel the eyes on them as he and Diana make their way down the street, clocks the man from Selfridge’s who looked twice at Diana as she tried to squeeze through the door with her sword and shield. He’d like to chalk it up to coincidence, but he knows a spy when he sees one.

 

It’s probably nothing, he tells himself as he leads Diana into the alley, ignoring the gut feeling telling him it will be anything _but_. He spotted at least three men watching them; he’s faced worse odds and made it out alive.

 

Ludendorff’s man fires while Steve is trying to get Diana to _stay behind me_ and Steve thinks that maybe his number is finally up, after all. The heat of the bullet sears through his palm, but it’s not the familiar pain of a slug, and when Steve looks down it’s at the crumpled remains of a bullet in his hand and Diana’s gauntlet glowing against his stomach.

 

Huh.

 

Maybe she is bulletproof after all.

 

She takes out all but one of Ludendorff’s men, while he watches, gobsmacked. He enjoys throw-in the last punch far more than he should, but he’s not used to being on the sidelines in a fight, either. Watching Diana fight is breathtaking; she moves so quickly, so fluidly, that he hardly knows where to look.

 

“Is there anything else you’d like to show me?” he asks when they stop to catch their breath.

 

She looks up at him, eyebrows raised, as if she can’t understand why he’s so surprised, and he wishes she didn’t have to. 

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until they’re leaving the pub, Charlie propped on Sammy’s shoulder the same way he’s been after too many nights of drinking, that Etta confesses, shame-faced, that they’ve sold the apartment.

 

“We all thought you were dead,” she says, fiddling with her umbrella. “I tried to tell them you’d be back — too hard to kill, that Captain Trevor, I said — but — Well, you know what they’re like.” She laughs nervously. “I’m lucky I was able to box up your things.”

 

Steve bites back the curse on the tip of his tongue. He knows all too well how it is; there isn’t a moment to waste in this war, and with men dropping like flies it’s only sensible to assume the worst. 

 

“I did get you a room, though,” Etta continues cheerfully. “At the Carlton. A little fancy, but I’ve billed it to the office — serves them right for giving up in the first place — and I thought it would be a nice send off before… well, you know. I would’ve gotten another room if I’d known you were coming, Diana, dear, but you’re more than welcome to stay at my flat —I’ve got a lovely spare room — or I can make up the couch in the office — mind you, it’s not very comfortable and I thought you’d prefer —”

 

“I would prefer to stay with Steve,” Diana says calmly.

 

Etta’s eyes widen, and Steve’s heart skips a beat even though it shouldn’t — Diana has stuck with him doggedly this whole time, though he’s sure it’s because she wants him to make good on his promise. It’s nothing more than that, and to think otherwise is foolish.

 

(And yet, he likes to think she enjoys his company.)

 

“I really don’t think —” Etta begins.

 

“It’s fine,” Steve says hastily, ignoring the pulse hammering in his throat like a scared rabbit. “You go on home, Etta, get some rest, you’ve done more than enough for us today. I’ll get her another room.”

 

Diana’s brow furrows in disapproval.

 

“I do not want another room,” she says sharply, after they have said their (numerous) goodbyes to Etta and promised not to cause _too_ much trouble over the border. Fog curls around the street lamps, half-obscuring her face in shadow. “We have already slept together; I do not see why it is necessary —”

 

“We’re not.” Steve’s heart is still pounding; he wonders if Diana can hear it. It’s embarrassing. He’s not a schoolboy.

 

“Ah.” Her brow creases again. “Another lie.”

 

 _It’s not a lie_ , he wants to say, and it isn’t, really: compared to the many others he’s woven over the course of the war, this one is harmless. He tells more lies than he does truth, nowadays. Diana, however, believes in honesty and honour and _vows_ , so he shrugs and says, “I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable.”

 

“Because we are not married.”

 

“Something like that.”

 

It’s one _hell_ of a room; Steve can’t help whistling through his teeth as he takes in the sumptuous furniture and decorations. It’s a honeymoon suite, the concierge tells them, proudly, and Steve almost laughs because there’s no way in hell he’ll be able to afford something like this for his honeymoon — if he survives long enough to have one, that is.

 

Diana is enthralled; she touches everything reverently, fingertips skimming chair backs and embroidered patterns like they’re priceless relics.

 

“Does everyone live like this?” she asks.

 

He thinks of his tiny, damp apartment on Fleet Street and laughs. “No,” he says quietly. “Most of us — No.” He might be the son of an army man, but they lived on a farm in the Midwest, the nearest town almost ten miles away. Steve grew up bumping along roads in the back of their weather-worn wagon, brown-skinned and barefoot, rode bareback through fields and went to bed with dirt under his nails. It wasn’t until he went to West Point that he realised gilt palaces could exist outside of storybooks.

 

Diana rubs her thumbnail along the raised embroidery of the armchair. “Even on Themyscira, even in the palace, we never had anything like this. It is all so— so _much._ ”

 

He hears the truth she doesn’t even know to say: _we never needed anything like this_.

 

“Yeah, well, I think you’ll find there’s a lot here you don’t have on Paradise Island.”

 

(War.)

 

(Poverty.)

 

(Crippling inequality.)

 

She laughs, quietly, fingers still tracing the swirling needlework.“It is hardly a paradise,” she says, eyes sparkling with mirth, echoing their conversation on the boat, and Steve thinks _oh, but it is_.

 

“Anyway.” Steve clears his throat, trying to fight the tightness that creeps up, that awkward nervousness he can’t seem to shake whenever he’s around her. _Jesus_ , he feels like he’s fifteen years old again, hovering on the edge of the town hall, trying to work up the courage to ask Sally Jones to dance. (He didn’t.) “We should, um —” He gestures at the space between them helplessly, as if Diana will somehow divine his meaning.

 

She does, or maybe she just takes pity on him: she smiles, says, “Yes, of course,” and begins removing her clothes with an efficiency that would have made his drill sergeant at the Academy cry.

 

Her coat is shed easily, but she struggles with the shirtwaist; Steve watches her fumble with buttons for a minute, lips curled into a half-smile at the frustrated crease of her brows, the determined set of her lips, until he remembers she's _undressing_ and looks away, cheeks flaming.

 

Diana, he thinks to himself, could care less (Steve remembers the frank curiosity on her face when she appraised _him_ ) but _he_ cares. The war has robbed him of just about everything he used to be, but he’ll be damned if it takes his manners with it, too.

 

She refused to buy undergarments, it seems, but wore her armour underneath instead; she leaves it on, more for his sake than hers, he thinks. He doesn’t imagine it’s comfortable, but she must be used to it.

 

She sits gingerly on the bed, testing the weight, the softness of the mattress, before falling backwards against the blankets with a sigh. Steve’s about to make a crack about 20th century mattresses measuring up to the beds on Themyscira, when Diana sits up, eyes him seriously, and says: “So this is what marriage is like.”

 

The words die in his throat.

 

"Uh, no," he stammers when he manages to collect himself. "Not really. It can be, sometimes, but mostly — No."

 

That frown he loves so well is back, rippling between her brows. "Then why do they bother? You say they do not love each other, they do not live together —”

 

"Well, it's not that they don't live together," he amends hastily. "They do, most of the time, it's just that they — They don't sleep in the same bedroom, usually. Marriage is — complicated," he adds, as Diana opens her mouth to protest once more. "People don’t always marry each other because they love each other."

 

"Why not?"

 

It’s simple, when she says it like that, but human life, in Steve’s experience, is anything but _simple_.

 

"Because," he says slowly, running a hand through his hair as he searches for the right words, "it isn't up to them, a lot of the time. Marriage was the only way for women to support themselves, before.”

 

_It still is now._

 

“They did not work?” she asks, brows pulled together. Steve wishes she didn't frown quite so often.

 

“They, ah, couldn’t.” Steve runs a hand through his hair and hates how much the words stick in his throat. "Some do, now. There aren't a lot of opportunities. It's, uh— It's complicated."

 

"It should not be."

 

 _No, it shouldn't,_ he thinks to himself, _but it is._

 

"On Themyscira, it is not like that. Everyone is expected to do their part in defence of our home, but we are also encouraged to follow our passions. I know many skilled craftsmen."

 

"Well, there aren't any men on Paradise Island, either."

 

The frown, so desperately _naïve_ , deepens. "Why should it matter if there are any men?"

 

Steve swallows, tongue heavy in his mouth. "Well, ah —"

 

One eyebrow rises in understanding. “So it is the men who make it complicated."

 

He thinks of the silence when Diana entered the room, the look on the War Council’s face as she read to them in Assyrian and Greek. _What do your women wear into battle_? she asked, and Steve thought, _every day is a battle._

 

In Diana’s world, women are powerful. They are respected. They are warriors.

 

They are unstoppable.

 

This world — _his_ world — is not like that.

 

His mother taught him women were to be respected, his father, revered, and Steve has, because he knows how much harder it is to be a woman in this world, how much _crueler_. He remembers the day his father sat his sisters down on the back porch and told them that they could be anything they wanted to be, but that they’d have to fight tooth and nail to do it. “Stevie’s got it easy, girls,” he said, “but the world just doesn’t think they’re ready for the things you two can do.”

 

“Yeah. I guess.” Steve bites the edge of his thumbnail, hard, and wonders if it will numb the guilt coiling in the pit of his stomach. “Anyway, you should, ah, get some rest. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

 

“And you?”

 

His fingers snag on the button of his waistcoat, nimble digits suddenly thick and clumsy. “What?”

 

Diana’s eyes are filled with a wide-eyed innocence that he thinks might not be entirely genuine. “Are you not going to rest, Steve Trevor?”

 

“Yeah. Um.” One hand flies automatically through his hair, a nervous habit that even British Intelligence’s most rigorous training hasn’t been able to break. “I just— I’ve got some things to do first. To get ready.”

 

“Well,” she says, and the way that one word falls off her tongue tells him she doesn’t believe him for a second, “don’t stay up too long. We have a long day ahead of us.”

 

* * *

 

He pens a letter to his mother as he watches Diana sleep. She looks so innocent, curled in on herself amidst the blankets, as though she is used to relying on herself for warmth. As though she is used to sleeping alone.

 

 _Ma_ , he writes. _I don’t know if the army’s sent you a note regarding my whereabouts lately, but if they have, please disregard it. I’m not dead yet, even though this war is trying its damnedest._

 

The war, in all likelihood, will succeed.

 

The candlelight flickers across Diana’s cheek. She is so young, so unencumbered by the griefs of the world. She sees the good in strangers, the beauty in things.

 

He used to look at the world that way, once.

 

_I’ve met a girl. Her name is Diana, and I hate to get ahead of myself here, but I think she might be the one. For me at least — I’m not sure that I’m right for her. I sure as hell don’t deserve her, but she’s sticking around for now, and I’m counting every day as a blessing._

 

He’s trying to think of a conclusion that doesn’t sound too morose when Diana stirs.

 

“Steve?” Her voice is bleary with sleep. “What are you doing?”

 

“Hm? Oh, uh, nothing,” he says, setting the pen aside. The rest can wait until morning. “I was just—. Well. It doesn’t matter now.”

 

She nods, apparently satisfied, and pats the sheets beside her, eyes still half-closed. “Come to bed.”

 

The way she says it, voice thick and soft and still half-asleep spreads a warm fire through him, makes him feel alive and _hopeful_ in a way he hasn’t in longer than he can remember.

 

 _You can’t do this_ , he warns himself. He’s toeing the edge of a very dangerous line, and once he crosses it, there can never be any going back.

 

He should sleep on the floor. It’s what he planned to do all along, the reason he stayed up writing this letter in the first place: so that Diana would fall asleep and he could skirt the conversation about sleeping arrangements and propriety entirely.

 

And yet.

 

“Yeah. Um. Okay.”

 

 _Christ, Trevor_ , he thinks as he slides under the covers. _You’re in trouble now._

 

He can hear Diana’s voice chiding him softly. _We have already slept together, Steve Trevor. You did not mind it then_.

 

(He didn’t, but he should have.)

 

He's almost asleep when he hears her voice, tentative in the darkness.

 

"Steve?"

 

"Hmm?" He rolls over so that he's facing her, tries to drag himself out of the clutches of sleep. She's closer than he expects; his nose brushes the spill of dark curls across the pillow. (She smells like spices and sunshine and salt.)

 

"Is this what it’s like? When people love each other?"

 

He thinks of his parents, the way his father used to smile at his mother over the newspaper, the way they held hands on the way to church, the way, after his father’s death, he used to find his mother asleep in her armchair, as if the thought of going up to an empty bed was too much.

 

 _Yes_ , he wants to say.

 

"I don't know," he says quietly, and it’s the truth, in a way.

 

If it's not the answer she wants to hear, she gives no indication: with a quiet hum under her breath and a "Goodnight, Steve," she turns her back on him and burrows into the quilt.

 

He should turn away from her, roll over again, but he doesn't; he falls asleep against her back, nose buried in her hair.

 

(He wakes in the wee hours before dawn in reverse, Diana curled against his back. Her knees fit perfectly into the curve of his own, his fingers twined with hers like they were made for one another. A single curl brushes against his cheek.)

 

(He gives himself a minute to savour it before slipping from between the sheets.)

 

* * *

 

The thunder of the canons in the distance is as familiar as the lullabies his mother used to sing. Steve has no trouble falling into what passes for sleep these days: closed eyes and deep breathing and the flashes of things he’d rather not see, one ear always open for danger.

 

Diana is not used to this noise. Diana has not spent the last two years sleeping around campfires like this one, trying to focus on the sound of her own breathing and not the sound of the destruction a few dozen miles away.

 

Diana has lived her life in peace.

 

He watches her stare into the flames, brows drawn together. Charlie’s shouts still echo in both of their ears, even though his footsteps have long since faded into the trees.

 

“He doesn’t mean it,” he says quietly. It’s not much of an excuse, but it’s the best he can do to make her understand.

 

Her frown deepens. “Antiope used to see ghosts. Even though Themyscira had been at peace since Ares was defeated, she would still dream sometimes of battle…” She shakes her head. “Why would he not want to be comforted?”

 

Steve sighs, twisting his gloves between his fingers. His fingers itch to reach out and touch her, to ease the hurt and confusion in her eyes, ( _keep everyone at arm’s length because you are death_ ) so he keeps them busy. “It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to be.” _He does. More than you know._ “Things are just— Men are expected to be certain things. Strong. Brave. Protectors. And some people think that to show anything else is weakness.”

 

“Vulnerability is not a weakness. Compassion makes you stronger.” Diana gives him a pointed look, one he’s seen many times already and expects he’ll see many times more before this is all over, one of disappointment and pity, like he’s something in need of saving. “ _That_ is what Amazons are taught.”

 

Steve stares into the flames until he is blinded by the flickering light. “You’re different,” he says quietly, ignoring the hurt in Diana’s eyes at the mention of _difference_.

 

(He remembers conversations on the boat about childhood and strange occurrences and whispers of difference, like it was a defect.)

 

“We are the protectors of mankind,” she retorts. “I do not see how that is any different.”

 

 _It’s not_ , he wants to tell her, _it’s us, we’ve got it all wrong,_ but saying so won’t change the fact that it _is_ , so he says nothing.

 

* * *

 

Steve’s heart stops when Diana climbs out of the trench. Sammy is elbowing him and Charlie and the boys are murmuring and whispering amongst one another in shock, but for a moment, he’s transfixed, watching with growing horror as the actual _goddess_ he’s fallen for (she can’t be anything less, not dressed like that) walks calmly out into _No Man’s Land_.

 

Sammy’s grip on his arm is painfully tight. “ _Steve_ ,” he hisses, and everything jerks back into motion.

 

“ _Diana_!” The cry from his lips is frantic, more panicked than anything he’s ever allowed himself to express, but the last thing on his mind right now is masculine convention, not when —

 

The first bullet glances off her gauntlet in a shower of sparks. Charlie is screaming beside him, and Steve knows how this must look to him, to all of them, but he remembers the beach, the battalion of warriors, the fierce look of determination in Diana’s eyes when she grabbed a bow and threw herself into the fray.

 

He told her there was nothing they could do here, that this was a lost cause, that this was not their battle to fight. _It’s not nothing_ , he told her when she looked at him in desperation, in anger, in _pain_ , like she couldn’t understand the suffering and neither can he, really. _We’re doing something_ , he said, and maybe they are but it’s really just an excuse, a lie they tell themselves to justify moving on and leaving the others behind. War makes liars out of men, he’s learned, if only so that they can not feel so guilty about the horrors they ignore in the name of the greater good.

 

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. His father used to say that, and Steve believes it—he has to, or he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

 

Diana doesn’t believe that.

 

 _No man can cross this place,_ he thinks to himself, as she deflects one bullet and then another, _but she might_.

 

He follows her, of course, even though he knows she can take care of herself. Follows her across the remains of what was once a forest, into the trenches and the town beyond. Follows her until his ears are ringing from the bomb blasts and his arms are aching from the recoil of his rifle, until he’s covered in mud and dust and the blood of who-knows-how-many Germans.

 

When it’s all over, after they’ve fought their way tooth-and-nail through an entire _battalion_ , after Diana has jumped through the clock tower of a church and survived without so much as a scratch, Steve falls to his knees. Now that the adrenaline has worn off and he’s realised what exactly it is that they’ve accomplished (the _unthinkable_ ), he can’t —

 

Well.

 

He needs a minute, is all.

 

She finds him, later. She emerges from the church into a crowd of well-wishes, shaking dust from her hair and shaking hands like she’s in the presidential campaign. Her eyes scour the square, and Steve wonders what she’s looking for until she sees him, pushing himself to his feet with a long exhale because he still can’t quite believe they’ve done it, and she smiles and he realises she’s looking for _him._

 

(His heart skips a beat or two before going back to normal.)

 

There’s beer later, to celebrate, and couples dancing in the square, and Charlie at the piano, and it’s like every victory celebration Steve’s ever been to, only better because it’s _theirs_. This isn’t a night in London at a seedy bar, celebrating the return from yet another harrowing assignment with the men he thinks he can call his brothers, this is a whole town celebrating a freedom they haven’t had for years. They all look as though there is no war anymore, and maybe there isn’t, for them.

 

Maybe this war will be over as soon as they say.

 

(Steve finds it hard to believe, despite how much he wants it to be true.)

 

He invites Diana to dance, because they saved the world today and he’s probably going to die tomorrow and, while he can’t go to his grave knowing he gave her a life, he _can_ say he gave her this.

 

“You call this dancing?” she says, but her eyes are laughing as he pulls her off the edge of the well and into his arms. She fits there like she belongs there, like they were made to be together, even though she frowns and tells him he’s awfully close. This is the way it’s supposed to be, he tells her with a ghost of the charming smile he used to flash at county dances.

 

 _This is love_ , he wants to say, but he can’t tell her that, not when tomorrow will plunge them into the unknown, not when he can offer her nothing but empty promises. 

 

“What is it like when there is no war?” she asks.

 

 _There’s always a war_ , he wants to tell her, but the genuine curiosity in her eyes reminds him that there are moments of peace, too. So he tells her about the little things: about breakfast, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind and because he knows it will make her laugh; about work, and marriage, and family and all the things she knows, in one way or another. He looks into her eyes (because he can’t help himself, not when they’re so close) and tells her they grow old together, and in this moment, he’s never wanted anything more in his life than for it to be _true_.

 

(It won’t happen, of course. The war will take him tomorrow, and he’s willing if it means this will all end even for a little while.)

 

They stay out together for far too long, until their noses are red from the cold and Diana has caught a million snowflakes on her tongue, eyes wide with wonderment. Steve watches, gloved fingers entwined with hers, and tells himself that this will be enough.

 

* * *

 

The innkeeper has rooms for all of them. Steve tries to pay him for his troubles, but the man refuses.

 

“You are _héros_ ,” he says simply. “This is the least we can do to repay our debt.”

 

Steve shows Diana to her room, after, because it’s the right thing to do, the polite thing to do, and because he can’t bear to take his hand from hers _quite_ yet. He means to leave her for the night, to pad down to the hall to his own room three doors down; he makes it as the door before he catches sight of the look in her eyes, the question, and he’s caught.

 

He can’t stay. It isn’t fair to give her something that will be taken away at a moment’s notice, to promise something that he knows they cannot have, and yet, he _wants._ He wants her like he’s never wanted anyone before in his life, wants her so much that every fibre of his being aches at the thought of leaving her.

 

It isn’t just sleeping with her. He wants to do that, of course, wants to peel her armour from her skin and show her that all twelve of those damn treatises are wrong, but more than anything, he wants to lie beside her, to feel the rise and fall of her breath against his back and know that she will be there when he wakes in the morning.

 

He wants certainty. He wants an eternity of mornings and evenings and breakfasts with the newspaper. He wants to take her to Paris and Rome and Athens and watch her discover all the secrets of the world. He wants to take her home and introduce her to his mother and his sisters. He wants to watch her walk down the aisle of the parish church on a spring morning with blossoms in her hair. He wants to build her a house with his bare hands, to raise his children with her. He wants dogs and fights and the damned picket fence.

 

More than anything, he wants _time_.

 

They don’t have time. They only have this, and it’s that thought that pushes Steve to close door, that leads him across the room to her.

 

Her fingers brush his cheek, softly. He cups her cheek in response; she looks at him from under her lashes, eyes dark and soft, and _sweet Jesus_ he’d touch her forever if she’d only keep looking at him like that. There is a certainty in her gaze, a calmness, that answers the hesitation in his own. 

 

This is her choice as much as it is his.

 

Her lips are soft beneath his own, but not pliant. She is tender and slow, but confident, and when she catches his bottom lip between her teeth and makes him groan he knows that her knowledge of pleasure is not confined to Clio.

 

She frees him from his coat easily as he fumbles with the clasp of her cloak. He’s nervous, more nervous than he’s ever been with a woman and it shows, though Diana is gracious with his clumsiness. 

 

She’s never lain with a man before, he thinks to himself as she undoes buckles and ties with a deftness he would need years to acquire.

 

 _Men are unnecessary for pleasure_ , he thinks to himself as her armour falls to the floor.

 

He doesn’t think anything after that; he doesn’t think he could, even if he wanted to.

 

(“I love you,” he whispers into her hair, later, as the early morning light streams in through the window. Diana hums softly in her sleep, presses her nose deeper into his shoulder.)

 

* * *

 

In the end, it all goes up in flames. Maybe Ludendorff is a god or maybe he isn’t; maybe Diana is right, and killing Ludendorff will end the war. Either way, Steve’s mission is to find and destroy the gas, because that’s one thing he _does_ know will end the war. He can’t trust the maybes, not when millions of lives are at stake.

 

Before all that, however, (before screaming and accusations and the blood of innocents on their hands, before _I can do it, let me do it_ and _It has to be me_ and _I wish we had more time_ and _I love you_ ) there is a moment where Diana walks into the ballroom in that blue dress and Steve _believes_ her.

 

He can’t help it. He’s seen many a beautiful woman in his life, and many a strong woman, too, but Diana — _lord_ , he has never felt for any woman what he feels for her. She’s strange, and powerful, and naive, and he would go to the ends of the earth if she asked him to. He’d walk into the fires of hell if it’d make her happy.

 

She makes him want to be a better person. Her goodness, her innocence, makes him feel ashamed. The war has made him bitter and cynical and cold, but when he looks at her, when he sees the fire shining in her eyes, he feels _hope._ Hope that maybe this will all soon be over.

 

Hope that maybe the fate of the war can hinge on the death of one man.

 

She looks like an avenging angel, sword tucked into the back of her dress, and as he watches her sweep across the floor, totally oblivious to Maru beside him, he thinks that she must be a god. There isn’t any other explanation. She is greater than this world, greater than all of them, and for a second, he believes that she can save them. That she _will_ save them. She is right, she must be: Ludendorff is a god, and she will kill him and all will be well again.

 

Diana reaches for her sword, vengeance written on her face, and he remembers their mission, thinks of the millions of lives that hang in the balance, and makes his choice.

 

(He always knew it would come to this in the end.)

 

“What are you doing?” she cries, angry and hurt and confused, as he pins her arms behind her back. Behind him, Ludendorff is leading the Kaiser away; Diana’s eyes follow him, blazing with hatred. “Steve, I—”

 

“I can’t let you do this,” he says quietly and it breaks his heart, but he _must_. She might not see it now, but he hopes that some day she will.

 

Maybe, when this is all over, he can teach her.

 

She tears her wrist from his grip with an ease that reminds how much stronger she is. He thinks of a tank, thrown aside like it was nothing; a church tower crumbling into dust. He’s a fly, caught in her web, and she could crush him without thinking twice.

 

There is disappointment in her eyes mingled with the anger. He is no longer different in her eyes, no longer better than his fellow men. “What I do is not up to you.”

 

She pushes him aside, but he follows. He always follows because there’s a part of him, hopeless as it might be, that yearns to make her _see_. To make her understand that men are not black and white, but that for all their complications, for all their darkness and cruelty and flaws, there is something in them worth saving.

 

For a brief moment, as he staggers to the outskirts of Veld ( _we were here hours ago_ and _what was it all for_ and _all I bring is death_ ), choking on poisonous gas, he wonders what exactly it is they’re fighting so hard to save.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Steve thinks when he climbs to the top of the radio tower and sees the sword stuck through the roof is that Diana is dead.

 

(She can’t be, he knows this, because she’s _Diana_ and he’s seen her throw a tank across a town square like it was nothing, but the terror creeps from the pit of his stomach nonetheless. Ares — who isn’t real, _can’t_ be real, because that means there’s an actual _god_ out in the world who could really kill Diana — has done it. Chaos has won, and the one light in Steve’s life amid all this darkness has been snuffed out for good.)

 

Still, despite all his certainty that he’s wrong, that he’s being unreasonable, that he’s jumping to worst-case scenarios, his knees go weak when he sees her on the rooftop.

 

“ _Diana_.” Her name falls from his lips like a prayer. “Thank God.”

 

She looks at him with blank, empty eyes that he’s seen a thousand times in the faces of a hundred soldiers and his heart sinks.

 

“I killed him,” she says numbly, “and they are still fighting. Why are they fighting?”

 

This, _this_ , is Steve’s worst nightmare. More than Ares, more than Ludendorff, more than dying or failing — this is what he has been dreading: the day that Diana realises that the world, that men, are not as good as she thinks they are. He never wanted it to come to this.

 

“I don’t know, Diana, I don’t—”

 

He doesn’t, he never has. He’s not sure he can.

 

He can see in her eyes that she won’t help him, but he asks her all the same because he loves her and he _hopes_.

 

“They don’t deserve my help—”

 

“It’s not about deserve! Maybe we don’t. Maybe we don’t deserve your help—” they don’t by God, they’ve never deserved her “but it’s not about what you deserve. It’s about what you believe.”

 

Maybe Ares isn’t real and maybe men have always been killers at heart. Maybe Diana’s right: maybe this isn’t her war, and maybe they don’t deserve her (they don’t), but it’s _his_ war, and he’ll be damned if he gives up now. He loves Diana, loves her more than he has ever loved anything on this earth, and he needs her like he needs to breathe, but he’s always known it wasn’t his place to get what he wanted from life. He has a job to do. A war to end. 

 

He presses his face into her chest desperately, like a prayer.

 

“I have to go,” he says, and he wishes with all his heart that she’ll change her mind and come with him, even though he knows she won’t. “I have to— I have to go.”

 

And then Ares _is_ real, and he can only watch from afar as Diana is thrown like a rag doll. She can defeat him, she has to — she was born for it, he thinks — but the plane is still going to take off and the gas will still kill millions of people, and this isn’t something Diana can stop. Not this time.

 

It has to be him.

 

He can’t do much to kill a god — can’t do anything, actually — but he can do this.

 

He’s always figured he’d have to do something like this.

 

He sees her one last time as he’s running towards the plane. She’s curled on the ground, reeling from Ares’ latest blow and he can’t stop himself from kneeling beside her and pulling her into his arms one more time. 

 

“I wish we had more time,” he says, pressing his father’s watch into her hands, and _God_ , how he wishes that were true.

 

“I love you,” he says, and the words ache in his bones, stronger than anything he’s ever felt in his life, and he just wants to stay here, with her, and let the rest of the world fuck off, but he _can’t_ —

 

He’s already running when she calls his name. It’s torn from her throat, raw and raggedy and half a scream, and he turns his head halfway to look at her one last time before the plane’s engine roars louder and he _runs_.

 

(He thinks of her in those last moments, before he pulls the trigger; closes his eyes and imagines them the way they were last night at the inn, her body moulded to his, her lips against his cheek, his fingers in her curls.)

 

(Her smile is the last thing he sees.)

  
_._

_._

_._

  
_This is me saying_

_that I_

_would set myself on fire_

_to bring light_

_to all of the dark places_

_within you._

 

—Beau Taplin, “Conflagration”


End file.
